Hi corrin184,
Watergate affected America deeply. For the first time, a president was
publicly exposed as behaving himself in a way that didn't suit what
Americans thought the idea of their president was. For the first and
only time in American history, a president resigned from office.
Richard Nixon and his abuses of power led to a severe mistrust in
political figures that had not existed before for Americans. With
this began the situation as it exists today, in which the office of
the presidency has been reduced from its once great stature in
Americans' eyes-- the president is not perfect and will make mistakes.
This was reinforced even more with the sexual scandals that Bill
Clinton endured while in office.
The actual Watergate burglary, in which the offices of the Democratic
National Committee were broken into by Republicans, a burglary which
was later covered up by Nixon, pales in comparison to many of the
allegations that came out of the Watergate hearings. Nixon's "enemies
list," his attempts to cover up certain truths about the Vietnam War,
and his ranting White House tapes, 18 minutes of which were allegedly
accidentally erased by Nixon's secretary, all served to show America
that the president they thought they knew, and had just re-elected,
they did not actually know.
http://www.chron.com/cgi-bin/auth/story/content/chronicle/editorial/97/06/15/ben-veniste-6-15.0-2.html
"The American people watched in amazement as the Nixon
administration's explanation for Watergate changed from 'we didn't do
it' to 'the CIA set us up' to 'they all (past presidents) did it' to
'John Dean (the White House counsel) did it' to, finally, Nixon's
memorable statement, 'I am not a crook.'" Presidents had certainly
lied to cover their own misdeeds up before; however, it had never been
so exposed to the American people before, in such a public way, and
hence never had an impact on America the way Nixon's machinations did.
Previously, presidents had been thought of as representing America and
all that it stands for. Upon closer inspection of Nixon, most
Americans did not want him to stand for their values, and separated
what they believed and what most Americans believed from what the
American president believed. This was an irrevocable change in how the
presidency was viewed.
The coverage of the scandal by the Washington Post reinforced the
importance of newspapers and the media in general to the American
public-- through investigative reporting, a presidency had been
brought down, and scandals had been uncovered. Most importantly,
investigations by journalists had most probably directly led to a
president of the United States resigning! Nothing akin to this had
ever happened before, although investigative journalism was certainly
not a new phenomenon, as early 20th century muckrakers could attest.
Newspapers were taken more seriously after this, as guardians of the
public interest and objective reporters of things that the public
needs to know. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein won a Pulitzer Prize
for their work on the case, greatly assisted by their anonymous
source, Deep Throat, who came forward last year as the FBI's Mark
Felt. The Senate hearings on the case were also televised and brought
the case into Americans' living rooms.
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3735
"What effect has Watergate had on journalism since Nixon's
resignation? Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. says
the scandal has led to more aggressive coverage of the White House,
where reporters had embarrassed themselves by missing the story of
Nixon's culpability. 'White House briefings have been entirely
different in the last 30 years than in the rest of history,' Downie
observes. 'The relationship between the White House and the press was
changed forever by Watergate.'"
"Investigative reporter [James] Polk, now a senior producer at CNN,
believes that 'politics has changed more as a result of Watergate than
journalism has, to the benefit of politicians more than journalists.
Even in the Nixon White House, there was at least a camaraderie of
proximity among officials who worked near reporters. Now, not only are
the doors closed, but administrations are much better at controlling
leaks of sensitive information.'"
In the 1960s, many reporters and many people in general knew of John
Kennedy's affairs, health problems and even Mafia ties, but nothing
was ever said in the mainstream press about any of these subjects out
of a sense of respect for the office of the presidency and a sense of
decorum in general. After Watergate, this all changed. Iran-Contra,
Gennifer Flowers, GW Bush's drinking and driving and military record--
all of these subjects are presented to the public by not just
tabloids, but mainstream media. There is no sense that because someone
is president, they should be able to hide certain things from the
American people. This attitude was extended to other public officials,
also-- Wilbur Mills, a powerful congressman at that time, had been
involved in several drunken driving incidents that had gone unreported
in the press. Shortly after Watergate, he was involved in another
drunk driving incident; this time it was reported by the press and he
was forced to resign his position as chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee.
The nonprofit group Investigative Reporters and Editors was founded
the year after Nixon's resignation and aims to teach prosepective
investigative journalists proper techniques. It now has 5,000 members.
"Watergate 'solidified the critical importance of investigative
reporting,' says IRE Executive Director Brant Houston. 'All the
President's Men' popularized and 'humanized investigative reporting,'
Houston observes, and 'provided the inspiration for thousands of young
people to become investigative journalists who wanted to make a
difference.'"
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3735
Nixon maintained that he shouldn't have to hand over his recordings
from the Oval Office because of executive privilege-- but the Senate
voted that executive privilege did not apply and he must hand them
over for inspection. Nixon did not want to hand them over for good
reason-- the tapes were extremely unflattering to him. Such a private
glimpse-- secret recordings of a president when he didn't think the
American public would ever hear-- were unprecedented and served to
show that the president was not always what he seemed to be on TV.
This also caused others to give other presidents second looks and many
biographies with unflattering details of past presidents have since
come out. Today, biographies can come out which wonder whether a
president was gay or whether he had affairs or things of that nature.
This would not have been as acceptable before Nixon's adventures in
storytelling.
When Nixon had tried everything else he could to prevent himself being
forced to hand over the tapes, he resorted to firing many top-level
officials involved in the investigation: "Cox became a victim of the
now infamous "Saturday Night Massacre", where the public watched in
outrage as several high profile officials involved in the
investigation were sacked or ousted, in what has been described as a
'bureaucratic culling'. Over 300,000 telegrams were received by the
White House in protest at the actions of the now desperate President
Nixon."
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/crime/caseclosed/watergate.shtml)
This atmosphere resulted in Nixon being impeached, only the second
time in history that a president had been. Realizing that he would
probably be removed from office after impeachment hearings, Nixon had
no choice but to resign. Nixon had been re-elected in a landslide and
was extremely popular before Watergate-- it is amazing that he allowed
himself to be brought down in such a public and terrible way. For
Americans who had voted for him and liked him as president, it must
have been incredibly amazing to see these events unfold.
Presidents now have less of a degree of privacy as far as their
personal lives go-- they are expected to provide recent income tax
forms and results of health exams for public perusal. Presidents since
FDR had recorded Oval Office conversations, but the practice was
predictably ended after the legal possibilities involving these tapes
were exposed.
The Watergate scandal affects the American psyche today more than most
Americans would even realize. Its legacy is seen by the reaction of
Congress to allegations of abuse of power by Clinton and the hiring of
Kenneth Starr, at a huge expense in taxpayer dollars, to look into the
allegations. The addition of the "-gate" suffix onto anything that
even partially resembles a scandal is also a remnant of Watergate. (It
is also a way to make even a small scandal seem like a huge one.)
As far as legal reforms go, the Federal Election Campaign Act had been
passed in 1971, regulating how presidential campaigns could be
financed. Outrage at the Watergate situation propelled amendments to
FECA through Congress that were added in 1974-- amendments that
limited the sources from which candidates could get money and extended
public support to presidential general candidates. The Federal
Election Commission was also created to oversee elections.
Additionally, changes were made to the Freedom of Information Act,
allowing information to be more freely obtained by those who wanted
it.
Because of the many lawyers involved in the scandal, the American Bar
Association underwent reforms to gain a better image for its members,
passing a new code of conduct and requiring that law students take a
course in professional responsibility. This still exists for law
students today.
Additional Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal#Aftermath
Search terms:
watergate affect nation
watergate campaign financing
If you need any additional help or clarifications, let me know and
I'll be glad to assist you with them. Thank you for your question.
Cheers,
--keystroke-ga |
